April 20
IRAN----executions
4 prisoners executed in Iran: 1 hanged in public
4 prisoners were executed in three different cities of Iran, reported the state
run Iranian media.
1 prisoner hanged in Semnan (northern Iran) April 18:
The official site of the judiciary in Semnan (northern Iran) reported that 1
prisoner was hanged in the prison of this city Wednesday April 18. According to
the report the prisoner was convicted of keeping and carrying 3 kilos and 984
grams of crack (concentrated heroin). The prisoner was idenified by the
initials "M. Gh.".
2 prisoners were hanged in the prison of Isfahan (Centarl Iran) this morning:
According to the Iranian state broadcasting 2 prisoners were hanged in the
central prison of Isfahan. The prisoners who were not identified by name, were
convicted of keeping 710 grams and 628 grams of crack respectively, said the
report.
1 man was hanged publicly in the town of Marvdasht (central Iran):
The official Iranian news agency IRNA reported that 1 man was hanged publicly
in the town of Marvdasht (Fars province, Central Iran) this morning, Thursday
April 19. The man who was identified as "S. M." and was convicted of sodomy
rape. According to the report the man was also charged with kidnapping and
murder.
(source: Iran Human Rights)
**********************
Homosexuals are inferior to dogs and pigs, says Iranian cleric----Ayatollah
Javadi-Amoli has blamed homosexuals for spread of Aids and says pro-gay
politicians are lower than animals
An influential Iranian cleric who is entitled to issue juristic rulings
according to the Sharia law, has condemned western lawmakers involved in the
decriminalisation of homosexuality, saying those politicians are lower than
animals.
Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, an Islamic scholar based in Iran's holy city
of Qom, said in a speech among his followers that homosexuals are inferior to
dogs and pigs, according to the news website Khabaronline.
"If a society commits a new sin, it will face a new punishment," he said while
interpreting Qur'anic verses about prophet Lot whose tribe Isalmic scholars say
was punished by God for sodomy. "Problems like Aids did not exist before."
Citing the Qur'an, Javadi-Amoli said politicians who pass laws in favour of
homosexuals are lower than animals. "Even animals ... dogs and pigs don't
engage in this disgusting act [homosexuality] but yet they [western
politicians] pass laws in favour of them in their parliaments."
Homosexuality is punishable by death according to fatwas issued by almost all
Iranian clerics. Until recently, Lavat (sodomy for men) was punishable by death
for all individuals involved in consensual sexual intercourse.
But under new amendments approved recently in the Iranian parliament the person
who played an active role will be flogged 100 times if the sex was consensual
and he was not married, but the one who played a passive role will still be put
to death regardless of his marriage status.
Despite the horrific punishment for homosexuals in Iran, the gay community in
the country is alive underground and has won some recognition by coming out in
defiance of the regime.
In September 2011, a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Iranians
launched a campaign on Facebook, highlighting the discrimination against sexual
minorities in Iran where homosexuals are put to death.
(source: Agence France-Presse)
GAZA:
UN rights office says Gaza executions unlawful
The U.N.'s human rights office says 3 men recently sentenced to death in the
Palestinian territory of Gaza were executed unlawfully.
A spokesman for U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says the
men didn't have regular access to lawyers and were tried by a military court
despite being civilians.
Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva that the death sentences carried out
by hanging April 7 also weren't approved by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
as required by law.
The U.N. rights office is calling on Gaza's ruling Hamas faction to halt a
planned execution by firing squad.
At least 18 men have been executed in Gaza since Hamas seized power there in
2007.
The Palestinian Authority effectively halted the practice in the West Bank in
2004.
(source: Associated Press)
CHINA:
China Rejects Millionaire's Death Sentence
A 30-year-old millionaire once labeled one of China's richest women was spared
the death penalty, as China's highest court ruled on a case that shone a
spotlight on gaps in the nation's justice and financial systems and drew
sympathetic comments from Premier Wen Jiabao.
Wu Ying—who turned a single nail salon into a regional conglomerate—was
sentenced to death in 2009 after being convicted of swindling 11 investors out
of 380 million yuan ($60.3 million).
But China's Supreme People's Court, which must approve all death sentences in
China, on Friday said it declined to approve the sentence and referred the case
back to the high court in the Chinese province of Zhejiang.
"The Supreme People's Court feels that the amount of funds involved in the case
is huge, and a great deal of damage was caused to victims, and at the same time
seriously affected the government's financial management," it said in a
statement.
Power of Public Opinion?
But "on an overall assessment of the case, the death sentence may be stayed."
"This is good news. This is what we've been hoping for," said Zhang Yanfeng,
Ms. Wu's attorney.
Her death sentence drew an outpouring of protests from China's online
community, which questioned its severity for a financial crime. It also drew
attention to holes in the Chinese financial system, where smaller businesses
often struggle for funding even as giant state-owned enterprises enjoy cheap
credit from China's biggest banks.
At a press conference in March, Mr. Wen, the premier, told reporters that the
Supreme Court was "taking an extremely cautious attitude toward the Wu Ying
case." But he also said her case "reflects how the development of informal
finance has still not adapted to the development of our economy and society."
Since then, Mr. Wen has called for breaking what he has called the "monopoly"
state-controlled banks hold on lending and taken other steps toward shaking up
China's financial system. Chinese officials have authorized a pilot project in
Wenzhou, a city in China's Zhejiang province close to Ms. Wu's home of
Dongyang, to legalize parts of that city's informal lending system.
Ms. Wu, the daughter of a farmer, got her start as the owner of a single nail
salon. She turned it into a conglomerate called Bense Holding Group based in
China's eastern Zhejiang province, which prides itself on up-by-the-bootstraps
entrepreneurship.
Named in the 2006 Hurun Report—which tracks China's wealthy—as owning 3.6
billion yuan ($571.4 million) in assets, she was ranked the 68th wealthiest
person in the country that year.
In addition to her other businesses, Ms. Wu also acted as a sort of bank.
According to her lawyers, Ms. Wu received money from investors that she plowed
into her own business as well as lent out to others. That made her part of the
underground lending system, a general term that encompasses informal lending
networks, private investors, loan sharks and others.
The size of the country's underground lending market isn't clear, but
economists say it plays a major role in bringing needed funds to small and
medium-sized businesses, which account for roughly 80% of China's urban
employment. In October, UBS estimated the market could be as much as 4 trillion
yuan, or $632 billion, though it said much of it would be focused in the
Wenzhou area. By comparison, China's banks issue nearly 8 trillion yuan in new
loans annually.
Prosecutors said Ms. Wu collected 770 million yuan ($122.2 million) from her
investors with promises of 80% annual interest-rate returns, according to the
state-run Xinhua news agency. She wasn't able to return 380 million yuan,
prosecutors alleged. Mr. Zhang, Ms. Wu's attorney, contended that she borrowed
the money from investor friends and not the general public. Her attorneys have
also argued that Ms. Wu plowed the funds into business ventures.
Xinhua published pictures that it said showed some of Ms. Wu's investments,
which Dongyang police said comprised more than 100 properties, 41
cars—including Ferraris and BMWs—and more than 100 million yuan worth of
jewelry, mostly jade. Mr. Zhang, who said the pictures weren't used as evidence
during the trial, said she didn't use investor funds to make personal
purchases.
Legal experts independent of the case weighed in after the death sentence was
handed down. Zhang Sizhi, a Chinese attorney who was once appointed to defend
the disgraced Cultural Revolution-era political leaders known as the Gang of
Four, argued that Ms. Wu didn't appear to be planning an escape.
"If there was an intent to cheat, [Wu] would have followed the example of the
corrupt, converted the assets and fled—why would there be any assets left to
recover?" he wrote in an open letter in February to the Supreme People's Court.
The sentence also came as China's government has sought to temper the
judiciary's use of the death penalty. China doesn't disclose capital punishment
figures, but San Francisco-based human-rights group Dui Hua Foundation
estimates that 4,000 prisoners were executed in the country in 2011.
In 2006, the central government seized oversight of death sentences from
provincial courts, restoring it to the Supreme People's Court after a 23-year
hiatus, amid what state media suggested was a rash of errors in judicial
judgments and excessive use of the capital sentence.
Last year, the country's top legislative body, the National's People's
Congress, reduced the number of capital crimes to 55 from 68, with most of the
deleted offenses economic and nonviolent crimes.
"Her case has thrown existing reform proposals into relief and it has also put
into relief the trend of the public having a greater acceptance of removing
nonviolent crimes from capital punishment," said Joshua Rosenzweig, Hong
Kong-based senior research manager for the Dui Hua Foundation.
The court's decision drew an enthusiastic response from China's Twitter-like
microblogging services, which have become de facto forums for national
discussion.
"If it hadn't been for the fact that the Wu Ying case attracted widespread
attention, would she have avoided death?" a blogger called Lin Zongwei asked.
"We hope the final outcome is a good one, and that the [final] sentence won't
be an indefinite or very long one, as who knows what will happen in prison?"
said one microblogger going by the name Wenju007.
(source: Wall Street Journal)
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